GEOGRAPHICAL REGIONAL ASSESSMENT OF HOSPITAL-ASSOCIATED INFECTIONS IN PRE VS POST COVID-19 PANDEMIC
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Authors
Carter, Weleetka
Department
Healthcare Administration
Issue Date
2025
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Nosocomial infections::Nosocomial infections--Prevention::Nosocomial infections--Control::COVID-19 (Disease)--Transmission--Prevention::Hospital patients--Safety measures
Alternative Title
Abstract
Nosocomial or healthcare associated infections (HAI) impact patient safety, healthcare financial performance, and quality improvement in acute care hospital settings. With a $45 billion price tag, the mission to reduce or prevent HAIs is a concern for the healthcare industry, federal and state agencies, policymakers and providers. This capstone project evaluated HAI occurrences pre (2018) and post (2022) COVID-19 to determine if implementation of the new clinical guidelines have reduced HAI occurrences in acute hospital settings. With the use of statistical analysis, geographical regional differences in standardized infection ratio (SIR) were evaluated to determine if there was a statistical significance in the mean SIRs for each region. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to evaluate overall differences in mean SIR among the regions. In addition, pairwise comparisons between regions were performed using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. In the analysis comparing SIRs between year for each region, Wilcoxon signed-rank test was applied. For all analysis, statistical significance was defined as p<0.05. The results indicated that HAIs occurrence have decreased since COVID-19 for some HAIs but not all infections. Future studies are needed to determine what aspect of the new guidelines played a significant role is reducing HAI and strategies to improve infection rates for HAI that showed no reduction in occurrence.
Description
Spring 2024 Graduate Project/Thesis/Capstone in Healthcare Administration. Student ID redacted.
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Publisher
License
A copyright review process in August 2025 has determined that this item is in copyright, held by the author, Weleetka Carter. The written permission of the copyright holder is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions rests with person(s) desiring to use the item. http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/